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Cyntoia Brown 'appreciative and overwhelmed' by clemency efforts

Attorneys for Cyntoia Brown — a Nashville woman whose life sentence for a murder committed when she was a 16-year-old child prostitute has sparked global attention — plan to file a clemency petition with the Board of Parole before Christmas.

Cyntoia Brown 'appreciative and overwhelmed' by clemency efforts

16-year-old Cyntoia Brown was arrested in 2004 for the murder of a 43-year-old man. She was tried in adult court and sentenced to life. Filmmaker Dan Birman has followed her case from the Nashville trial to her incarceration at TN Prison for Women.
Produced by Daniel H. Birman and Independent Lens.

Cyntoia Brown is serving a life sentence for the murder of a man in 2004, when she was just 16.(Photo: Submitted)

Attorneys for Cyntoia Brown — a Nashville woman whose life sentence for a murder committed when she was a 16-year-old child prostitute has sparked global attention — plan to file a clemency petition with the Board of Parole before Christmas.

A clemency committee created to free Brown has collected several letters of support and is working towards submitting an application in the coming weeks, said Charles Bone, Brown's attorney.

Under Tennessee law, she will not have a chance for parole until she has served 51 years, without clemency from the governor.

Last month, scores of celebrities, including Rihanna and Kim Kardashian West took to social media to highlight Brown's case as an example of sex trafficking of children, advocating for her release to millions of followers who amplified the call. The hashtag #FreeCyntoiaBrown earned hundreds of thousands of re-tweets.

Brown is declining media interviews, according to her former public defender, Kathy Sinback, who has kept in touch with Brown since her trial.

Sinback, who currently serves as administrator for Nashville's juvenile court system, said Brown was "appreciative and overwhelmed" by the attention.

Bone said Brown, who has spent time at the Tennessee Prison for Women earning an associates degree and mentoring other prisoners, remained "mature" about the attention.

"She is the most remarkable young woman I've ever known and she is very encouraged, but very mature about the process," Bone said.

The crime

At 16, Brown climbed into a pickup truck on Murfreesboro Pike with Allen, a stranger. She drove to his home, got into his bed then shot him in the back of the head with a .40 caliber handgun as he lay naked beside her. Allen had guns in the home. Brown said she feared for her life and shot him with her own weapon.

At the time, Brown was living in an east Nashville hotel with a boyfriend who physically and sexually abused her and forced her into prostitution, according to court testimony.

Brown was convicted not only of murder, but on prostitution charges under a state law that has since been abolished amid recognition that minors are victims of sex trafficking, not consenting sex workers. Minors are no longer able to be convicted on sex charges under state law.